Some old and wonderful whiskey has become available in the last few years. The 20-year old Pappy Van Winkle burst into the mrketplace as, perhaps, the new king of bourbon. Now the 13-year old Van Winkle Family Reserve Rye (this is one of the most astonishing whiskeys you will ever taste). There is necessarily a very long lead time to produce goods such as these. Are there stocks available to keep up a continuous supply, or are these essentially one-off bottlings? If the latter, I shall continue hording (I'm already long a case of Pappy and jealous of every ounce!).

Learned to appreciate Bourbon as a student in Chicago in the 1960's

cowdery

02-22-2000, 10:23

Julian can answer for his specific products. In general, all of the distillers have whiskey of various ages available. One usually doesn't plan a specific product 20 years in advance. I know of one instance in which a distiller "found" a large cache of barrels that had fallen off the books and were, at that time, 20 and 25 years old.

Bourbon, unlike some other beverages, doesn't improve indefinitely in wood. At some point (when is a matter of personal taste) it becomes too woody. This is due to the practice of using only new barrels, which explains why it isn't a problem for scotch or cognac.

Shortly before they virtually exited the bourbon business, United Distillers was working on a series of rare, extra aged bottlings based on caches they had from defunct distilleries. They might have 5 barrels from this one, 20 barrels from that one. Those were intended to be "one of a kind" bottlings. When the initial bottling was gone, that was it. Ultimately, I think they only released two, one of which was called Joseph Finch. In my opinion they kind of screwed up even that, because they clouded the real (and genuinely interesting) origins of the whiskey in a bunch of marketing gobbledy-goop.

- chuck

jvanwinkle

02-25-2000, 09:33

Thanks for the nice comments about my whiskey. I am honred that you enjoy them.
My two 10-year labels, 12 year label, and 15 year label are my "regular" bottlings. These are all the same whiskey which I have made for me.
The two ryes and the two Pappys were "finds". The 20-year Pappy I found years ago. I liked the whiskey and continued aging it until it was 20-years old. I introduced this whiskey to honor my grandfather, Pappy. Unfortunately, it is all gone now. This whiskey and the others I find, I like to describe as "rescued" whiskeys. If I had not found them, tasted them, and put them on the market, lord knows what would have happened to them. Maybe shipped to Canada for their whiskey or even worse, put%2